When in children’s lives do gaps by family socioeconomic status (SES) in cognitive skills emerge, how large are they before children enter school, and how do they develop over schooling? We study the evolution of achievement gaps by parental education from birth to adolescence in Germany. We exploit data from fifty-seven tests taken from the age of seven months to sixteen years by the National Educational Panel Study. Because Germany has one of the most stratified education systems in the Western World, we hypothesized that achievement gaps will grow particularly during tracked secondary schooling. However, our findings show that SES gaps emerge and expand long before children enter school and then remain stable throughout their school careers. Because gaps stop growing, we tentatively conclude that schooling decreases inequality in learning by family SES.

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This article examines the relationship between work experience acquired during higher education and post-graduation labour market outcomes in four European countries: Germany, Italy, Norway and Spain. A theoretical framework that shows in which institutional contexts work experience may be a 'competitive advantage' for young graduates is developed. In the empirical analysis, data from the Higher Education and Graduate Employment in Europe (CHEERS) and Research into Employment and Professional Flexibility (REFLEX) surveys are used to examine the effect of a typology of student employment (accounting for both length and coherence of work experience with the field of study attended) on several occupational outcomes 4-5 years after graduation. The empirical results show that, in Italy and especially in Spain, work activities during tertiary education are associated with better labour market positions after graduation: any type of work experience increases employability and reduces the risk of unemployment, and furthermore, previous work experience -especially when coherent with the field of study -decreases the probability of skill mismatch in future occupations. The effect of student employment, however, is smaller for most outcomes in Germany and negligible in Norway.

Does schooling affect socioeconomic inequality in educational achievement? Earlier studies based on seasonal comparisons suggest schooling can equalize social gaps in learning. Yet recent replication studies have given rise to skepticism about the validity of older findings. We shed new light on the debate by estimating the causal effect of 1st-grade schooling on achievement inequality by socioeconomic family background in Germany. We elaborate a differential exposure approach that estimates the effect of exposure to 1st-grade schooling by exploiting (conditionally) random variation in test dates and birth dates for children who entered school on the same calendar day. We use recent data from the German NEPS to test school-exposure effects for a series of learning domains. Findings clearly indicate that 1st-grade schooling increases children’s learning in all domains. However, we do not find any evidence that these schooling effects differ by children’s socioeconomic background. We conclude that, although all children gain from schooling, schooling has no consequences for social inequality in learning. We discuss the relevance of our findings for sociological knowledge on the role of schooling in the process of stratification and highlight how our approach complements seasonal comparison studies.

This article focuses on school-leavers who enter employment with a temporary contract in the European context, and examines their probabilities to shift to standard employment or unemployment, and their chances of occupational mobility afterwards. The authors argue that two institutional dimensions of insider–outsider segmentation drive the career progression after a flexible entry: the gap between the regulation of permanent and temporary contracts and the degree of unionization. The analyses show that a disproportionate protection of permanent compared to temporary contracts increases the probability of remaining on a fixed-term contract, whereas the degree of unionization slightly decreases the chance of moving to jobs with higher or lower socio-economic status. Finally, a shift to permanent employment after a fixed-term entry is more often associated with occupational upward mobility in strongly rather than weakly unionized labour markets.

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Social gaps in children’s educational achievement emerge early in life and remain stable over schooling. Does social origin constantly shape achievement or is social inequality in school just an echo of inequality settled before schooling? We extend the previous research by studying the origins of social gaps in language achievement among primary-school students in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Based on dynamic accounts of skill development, we expected social origin to shape school-age achievement not only directly but also indirectly via before-school achievement. Using longitudinal data (Cohort Study on Educational Careers, Millennium Cohort Study, and National Educational Panel Study) and applying an instrumental variable approach, we estimated the extent to which achievement gaps by parental education in school were generated before and during schooling. About 50–80 per cent of language gaps observed at end of primary school were explained by gaps settled before formal schooling in all three countries. Conversely, at most 20–50 per cent of school-age gaps were generated during schooling. These findings suggest that the roots of social inequality in school-age achievement must be sought primarily in processes transpiring before school life starts.